Render Unto Rome_ The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church - Jason Berry [177]
Levada was unique among U.S. bishops for having been sued by a priest who blew the whistle on a cleric for making advances on a teenage boy.
Born in 1944, Jon Conley was an assistant U.S. attorney in Michigan who decided to become a priest in the late 1980s. Done with the bitter midwestern winters, Conley moved to San Francisco, went through the seminary, and was ordained. One night in 1997, as an assistant pastor, he entered his rectory to find the pastor, Father Gregory Aylward, crawling toward the back door. A flustered fourteen-year-old boy scrambled back to his post as phone receptionist. Suspecting the boy was too embarrassed to admit what had happened, Conley met with an auxiliary bishop who told him, “We usually keep these things in-house.” With Levada out of town, Conley decided to notify the San Mateo District Attorney’s Office. Frightened, the boy told investigators that he and Father Aylward had only been wrestling. No charges were filed.
Conley told the chancery he couldn’t live with a pedophile; he moved into a hotel. A chancery priest told Conley not to say “pedophile” or mention the accusations to anyone. The boy quit his rectory job. Conley met the family. The mother wept, saying she couldn’t force her son to testify about Aylward’s history of sexual advances. When Conley met with Archbishop Levada and a chancery monsignor, he knew the archdiocese was circling the wagons around Aylward.
When I interviewed Conley in 2005 on a magazine assignment, he said that Levada had used the word “calumny” when discussing the accusations against Aylward. In that meeting a monsignor was taking notes; Conley pulled out a tape recorder to avoid being set up as a scapegoat. “You don’t trust me?” said Levada. He ordered Conley to turn off the tape recorder. Conley refused. Levada ordered him onto administrative leave, saying, “Think about obedience.”
They met again privately, no tape recorder; Levada wanted Conley to undergo psychological evaluation. Conley refused. When the San Francisco Examiner got wind of Conley’s predicament, an archdiocesan statement said that the church had “instructed him to report the incident to civil authorities, and strongly supports the reporting of all incidents of suspected child abuse or neglect. It was [Conley’s] behavior subsequent to the reporting which was unacceptable.” Conley fired off a letter to the Examiner: “Why does the archdiocese of San Francisco not have written policies and procedures in place for priests to deal with situations of abuse?” He sued Levada and the archdiocese for defamation and infliction of emotional distress. Conley wanted a public apology and procedures for handling abuse allegations to protect whistle-blowing priests like himself. Levada ordered him to withdraw the suit and seek “a program of remedial assistance … [or] I will have no alternative but to impose on you the censure of suspension forbidding your exercise of all rights, privileges and faculties associated with the priestly ministry.”
Conley’s lawsuit was dismissed as an intrachurch matter. The boy’s family sued the archdiocese. Aylward admitted in a deposition that he had gotten sexual gratification for years from wrestling with minors. The archdiocese agreed to a $750,000 settlement with the family. Aylward left the ministry. Conley’s attorney appealed his case. A California appellate court ruled that the law mandating that clergy report suspected abusers superseded the freedom of religion privilege. Conley had a bona fide defamation claim against Levada. Depositions began; Levada threw in the towel. The church issued a statement praising Conley for reporting the incident. The archdiocese “prefunded” Conley’s retirement. How much, Conley would not say, but he had a nice apartment in the chic Noe Valley neighborhood with good views of the city. As we sat in his living room, watching TV coverage of Pope John Paul’s death, Conley,